A Look Back at the 2024 Homecoming Festival
Corey Crowder examines the impact of the 2024 MS John Hurt Homecoming Festival in light of recent efforts to silence African American history.
Blog
UPDATE: Cultural Heritage Action Fund Grant
This blog post contains a bid request as well as updates on our grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to preserve a juke joint in Glen Allan, MS and the St. James MB Church in Avalon, MS.
On the Streets of Bolton (MS)
This blog post was written by Mississippi Department of Transportation engineer Graham Clarke. His vast amount of field experience makes him the archetypical professional who first began to search for the Blues listening to the music and later ended up tracking down the burial grounds of Blues artists across the state. This post details his experiences in Bolton, Mississippi–a place that at the turn of the twentieth century featured the Chatmon, Patton, Sloan (Salome), and McCoy families, all of which later boasted commercial recording artists in the 1920s & 30s.
John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson
John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson was perhaps the most influential harmonica player in the 1940s. His untimely and violent death in the late 1940s cut his career short, however, and he missed out on the 1950s blues scene in Chicago. In 2012, journalist Dan Morris wrote this article about his memorial in Tennessee…
2024 Homecoming Festival Feedback & Community Archive Submission Form
We need input from everyone who attended and participated in the 2024 Homecoming Festival. Please answer the next series of questions to help the MS John Hurt Foundation and Mt. Zion Memorial Fund provide the best possible experience in the future…
2024 MS John Hurt Blues Festival
The Mt Zion Memorial Fund (MZMF) is partnering with the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation (MJHF) to present a two-day celebration of the life and musical legacy of Carroll County native Mississippi John Hurt on October 5-6, 2024. The event will take place on the former site of the Mississippi John Hurt Museum, which burned to the ground in February on County Road 109 in the Avalon community of Carroll County.
Juneteenth in Mississippi
In June, Corey Crowder attended a symposium on race and memorialization organized by the Lafayette County Remembrance Project (LCRP), and this blog post reflects on his experience as well as the importance of remembering Juneteenth.
The Last Picnic of RL Boyce
In October 2023, the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund sponsored the last of the RL Boyce Picnics in Como, Mississippi. Even though we did not know it at the time, it proved the last time that RL Boyce would hold court over the event prior to his passing on November 9.